NOȚIUNILE DE CONFLICT ARMAT INTERNAȚIONAL, CONFLICT ARMAT INTERN ȘI GRUPĂRILE TERORISTE CA POTENȚIAL FACTOR GENERATOR DE CONFLICT ARMAT

From the time of the four Geneva Conventions (1949) and the 1st Additional Protocol to those (1977) till present days, the notion of belligerency has extended and restructured itself. The evolutions of terrorist groups from the national level of organization to transnational level start to raise the question of the legal qualification of those structures from criminal groups to belligerents. Has the terrorist group got beyond the borders of national law and start to acquire a legal personality in the international law of armed conflicts? In the present study we will start from the classical definitions of the international armed conflict, non-international armed conflict, then observe the evolution of those notions under the case law of the international criminal tribunals set off by the United Nations for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, as well as the Status of the International Criminal Court, all reflected in contemporary legal doctrine. At the end, we will analyse the capacity of the terrorist group as armed conflict generating factor.